Quote:
Originally Posted by Roof-Daddy
The most important thing the jays need to figure out is why these young core players are dying on the vine.
You go back to 2021 and 2022 the Jays looked poised to be a juggernaut with a young core that looked unstoppable.
Vlad was an early 20's 6+ WAR in 2021, 2nd in MVP voting and triple crown contender
Bo was an early 20's perennial 4+ WAR SS
Manoah came into the league with 6 WAR in his first season and a half and was a CY finalist
Pearson was the top pitching prospect in all of baseball and DOMINATING AAA
Kirk's bat could not be stopped all the way up the MiLB ladder and he broke into the league the same way and was a 4 WAR catcher
I don't think a single person on the planet would have predicted that we'd be sitting here in 2024 five weeks into the season with those 5 core pieces being basically replacement level as a group.
It's a total disaster.
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Not trying to lay everything at the feet of Atkins but for a management team that came in preaching development and peak performance, where is it?
In addition to the list you have here what young player have they developed in the last 3-4 years? If you have this great development model and mindset where are the results, at any level? is there any position player who has gotten to this peak performance since becoming a Blue Jay? Even for pitching sure I think Pete Walker is good at what he does but their success there lies in going out and getting, and paying a premium for too, establish talent. Who have they developed?
Blair/Barker was the ones who got me on this path but the Jays do have the feeling of a science experiment gone wrong. You can debate some of the moves and the philosophy of Atkins but the biggest question I have for them is where is this performance enablement and development you spoke of because I see no examples of it, and as you pointed out you actually see a TON of regression.